Merchants cautiously optimistic about holiday season

(Host) With
gas over three dollars a gallon, heating fuel near an all time high and plenty
of bleak economic news, local retailers have been understandably concerned about
this year's holiday shopping season.

(Keck) Chris
Morrow is general manager of the Northsire Bookstore in Manchester.

(Morrow)"Listening to the news, I was
pretty pessimistic. But the big storm
and the weather being cold and good over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend - that helped us out."

(Keck)
Because they're dependent on the snow economy, Morrow said the lack of
snow last Christmas hurt. While he's
hopeful this holiday season will be better, he says high gas prices are a
concern.

(Morrow) "At a certain threshold people,
will start driving less. I don't know if we've reached that yet or not. But we obviously depend on people driving
here from all over. And if gas prices
are high, we're going to get less traffic."

(Keck) Bernie
Carr, who owns Carr's Florist and Gift shop in Brandon, agrees. He
says every year, Brandon area businesses host two special holiday shopping events
where merchants extend their hours, reduce prices and offer various other
incentives to boost sales.

Last Wednesday was this year's first such Moonlight
Madness event, and Carr says his store did well.

(Carr) "We
have a giveaway and people sign up for the giveaway and we ask them to put
their town down. And by taking their
town address we can kind of get a feel from where we're drawing from. And I will say this Moonlight Madness
tended to be mostly locals. Maybe 10%
out-of-town shoppers. That's down from
the last couple years. That could very
well be a result of gas prices."

(Keck) High gas prices may push more shoppers to buy
on-line rather than drive to a local retailer.

To compensate, many towns are sprucing up their
decorations and using other incentives to provide more holiday ambiance.

In Rutland
for example, shoppers can take wagon rides around the historic downtown, or have
a visit with Santa.

Elke Reichelt's family owns Clays - a
women's clothing store with branches in several cities, including Rutland and Middlebury. She says those local efforts pay off.

(Reichelt)
"Oh I think it does. I know they're doing a lot of promotion in
Middlebury. They're having people
register to win 200 dollars in Middlebury money. I think it takes a while to get people to
know that they're doing special things around the holidays. So they have to do
it year after year for people to get used to it."

(Keck) Just
how much those incentives do or don't do will be known next month.